Residents and experts urge Finance Committee to retain funding for New Haven's Office of Climate and Sustainability

Dozens of residents and local experts told the Finance Committee on Tuesday evening that the mayor's proposed budget should preserve funding for the city's Office of Climate and Sustainability (OCS).

Speakers described OCS as a small, grant-winning operation that advances projects to reduce air pollution, lower energy costs and leverage outside dollars for the city. "It figures out how to reposition our parking lots and landfill to generate revenue and to produce electricity," said Paul Wessel, a former city economic development staffer who testified in favor of the office. Several speakers said the office's work has public-health implications, pointing to elevated asthma rates in city neighborhoods.

City officials who run OCS told the committee the office has helped secure more than $34 million in grant funding and has active projects that would be jeopardized if its staff were cut. "We have six solar projects in development, nearly a million dollars in LED retrofit work for schools, and a $9.5 million EPA award to power Union Station and a forthcoming mixed-income geothermal development," said Steven Winter, executive director of sustainability in the mayor's office. Winter and Hannah Zo, the city's sustainability policy analyst, asked the committee to fund two positions currently supported by ARPA that the administration wants moved into the general fund so multi-year projects and reporting obligations can continue uninterrupted.

Committee members pressed officials about the risk to grant awards if OCS funding is not continued. Winter said some federal grants carry rigid work plans and timelines and that a court challenge to a federal cancellation had left roughly $21 million in awards paused; he warned that losing local staff continuity would make it difficult to meet federal reporting requirements and could endanger those funds.

Supporters framed the OCS budget ask as modest compared with the money it brings in: speakers repeatedly cited a roughly $250,000 annual local cost versus millions in outside funding and concrete programs such as EV deployments, solar installations and home energy upgrades. "Retaining OCS would cost the city about $250,000 a year, but it's already delivered more than $34 million in grants," Jeremy Schulick, deputy director of Clean Transportation Communities of Southern Connecticut, told the committee.

The committee did not vote on the budget at the meeting; members heard the presentations and asked questions about which grants are secured, how contracts are structured, and whether state and federal funding streams would be available going forward. The public hearing portion of the budget process will continue on March 31, when the committee resumes departmental workshops and deliberations.